Neptunia & Friends: Maintenance Update
by Ruacchi
Summary: Imagine that you get back home one day, turn on your phone and then you open your favorite mobile application. Now, imagine that one of the girls from the app suddenly becomes real and you get the chance to become more than just friends in real life... Me? I don't have to imagine; that's exactly what's happening to me.


**Shoutout to Porpol for beta reading my stuff. Your help is always appreciated!**

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**Chapter 1:**

**"Good Morning!"**

It's currently late in the evening, and I'm walking my way back home through one of the many quiet streets in the small town I live in. I'm wearing a t-shirt underneath a thick coat, a gray scarf, gloves, blue jeans and a pair of boots. The warm clothing is mostly because winter is right around the corner, so they're a must to go against the increasingly colder nights. I'm also holding a plastic bag with my right hand, which contains some stuff I bought earlier at a general store: Food supplies, a couple of canned drinks, magazines and other items for my personal subsistence.

To my right, faun and greenery govern pretty much the entirety of the scenery, with plants, flowers and trees being easy to spot during the day, no matter how far you are from them. In the opposite direction to all the nature, however, is a long line of houses that seem to continue far down the street. Some of those households even had their front lights on, clear indication that the people inside were still awake.

Aside from the light coming from those houses, lamp posts—set every few steps or so—also provided a majority of the street's illumination, making nocturnal strolls possible, though probably ill advised. You know, with it being dangerous to walk alone at night and stuff.

After about an hour of a largely uneventful stroll, I reach to my destination: A relatively sizable—at least compared to the small town—apartment complex. As I approach the metallic gate at the entrance, its weary paint job makes me wonder when the landlord is going to get this place patched up. It's pretty old and worn out, honestly. Knowing that greedy woman, though, it probably won't happen anytime soon.

"Until something really bad happens, it's likely she won't move a finger to do anything at all, even less move her money," I say to no one in particular. I then take a card key from one of the pockets of my coat and slide it through the card reader attached to the gate's lock. The thing is rather beat-up and sometimes refuses to open the door, regardless of how many times you swipe the card. The red light on it flashes, turns off and—

... It turns on again, this time with a green colour, and also accompanied by the sound of lock being released. I sigh in relief, and open the metallic gate before I walk inside the building. My footsteps echo against the dull orange polymer floor. My eyes drift from a single potted plant sitting at a side, and towards the out of order elevator at the end of the hallway. It apparently used to be functional long before I moved in, but it broke down during an earthquake or something, and has been in that state ever since.

This is just another thing on the large list of stuff the landlord has never, and most likely never will get fixed for as long as she's alive or, at the very least, for as long as she's this building's landlord.

I can only spare the poor transport a silent apology, as I usually do every time I come across this hallway, and walk upstairs towards my apartment.

A brief walk through more worn down hallways later, I finally reach the door to my actual home. The wing is pretty much uninhabited. Save for me, everyone else moved away. They just couldn't stand the sorry conditions the building was constantly kept in and for good reason. I, on the other hand, decided to stay, evidently, though it pretty much was because I lack enough money to move somewhere else.

"... Maybe one of these days..." I mumble, as I used a key to open up the door, and then walked into my humble place. I chuckled, while my hand clumsily tapped on the wall to find the light switch, "Yeah, as if."

Once my fingers came in contact with the switch, I flicked the lights on. The room I'm in right now is the living, consisting of a couch, a humble TV set on top of a wooden stand filled to the brim with magazines and games—the latter are from a console I actually keep in my bedroom, rather than here. There's also a dining table further down the room, complete with four chairs, although I only use a single one of those four. Lastly, two doors—not counting the one I just walked through to get in—lead to the bathroom and the bedroom, respectively.

After getting rid of my coat, as well as the other accessories, I proceeded to head to my bedroom. On the way there, I left the plastic bag of miscellaneous on top of the table. Then, at the bedroom, I gunned straight for the small night stand located next to the upper side of the bed. The rest of the room is as plain as you can imagine, and there's even the game console I talked about; I don't play with it anymore, since it won't turn on for some reason, and I don't have the money to get it repaired right now...

"I can only hope the save files are still intact the day I do get it repaired it, though," I say to no one. I then grab my phone, which was lying on top of the aforementioned stand. It had been charging the entire time, so it's no surprise that upon turning it on, the battery is full.

I leave my room with phone in hand, now making a beeline for the couch. I pretty much dropped myself onto the piece of furniture, and began to fiddle with my phone for a bit. Eventually, the screen lit up as I opened a certain application.

As it loaded, the name of the developers popped, as well the name of the app; I won't go into too much detail, but this is a mobile application named "Neptunia & Friends" where you can... Well, in short, you can spend time with a few cute girls. You can have them talk to you, play with them, change their outfits and more. I'm mostly playing because, for one, I do like the series, and this app does help me relieve some stress I build through the day.

I opened the can I had produced from the bag and took a sip from it, as the app finally finished loading. Rather than load the main screen, however, announcements regarding a maintenance notice popped up, as well as some other notifications. I cleared through them quickly, since I don't really bother looking at that kind of thing. One of the notices, though, couldn't be skipped like the rest. It had an accept button below, so I pressed on it without truly reading what it was about, and then it brought me to... a downloading screen?

"Downloading resources?" I asked myself as I read the text on the screen. Apparently, and if I guess it right, this is probably an update they made after the maintenance, possibly to fix some bugs and stuff like that. "Well, Noire's voice clips did sound a bit warped at times recently, so it makes sense I guess. I should've expected the developers to be quick with those patches, since this app is quite popular after all."

Looking at the download, it didn't seem to be an optional one, though again, it most likely is there to add some patches. Since I couldn't manually stop it, and I wasn't going to risk leaving the game only for the download to be cancelled, and then having to potentially uninstall and then reinstall the entire thing, I decided to just let it be. Interestingly enough, the bar didn't show how much space would this update consume, but I was rather tired, so I didn't pay enough attention to actually care about that. If worst comes to happen, I'll see what to do in the morning. Tomorrow is Saturday, after all, so I'll have plenty of time for that.

After having made my decision to leave the game alone, I finished my drink and threw the now empty can in the trash bin in the kitchen, which I forgot to mention, is located by the dining table; it's not a super kitchen or anything, but it does serves the purpose of... being a kitchen, I suppose. Anyway, afterwards, I went back to my room, plugged the charger to my phone and left it on the stand. Then, I went back out, though I headed to the bathroom.

What? I like to take warm baths immediately before going to sleep.

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"...-llo?"

I can hear a mumble in my sleep, or at least, I think I'm still asleep... Wait, no, I live alone. This is definitely a dream, and I can hear a feminine mumble calling me in it. Judging from how she's gently shaking my body, as well as her aforementioned calling, this girl is most likely trying to wake me up.

"Please, wake up, Lua... Its morning already...!"

I can hear it clearer now. The voice has a familiar ring to it. I feel like I've heard it before, and not only that, but also quite often, too. However, for some reason, I'm unable to place my finger as to where I did. This probably has something to do with the fact that my mind is too groggy to think straight; I'm supposed to be asleep, after all.

... Wait.

"L-Lua...?" I ask in a half-asleep, half-awake voice. I just realised that the voice called me with that name. The name I'm only using for one game and one game alone. That is, the application of Hyperdimension Neptunia I left updating the night prior.

"Ah! You're awake at last, Lua!" replied the voice. It apparently came from behind me. More exactly, it came from the direction where night stand—on top of which I had left my phone last night—was located. "I've been trying to wake you up for a while, and I feared you were trying to ignore me or something..."

I couldn't answer. My mind was still trying to process this. The voice came from where the phone was and it sounded just like... "N-Nepgear?"

"Yes, Lua?" She replied again, and although I didn't really notice before, her voice sounded too clear, almost as if she was there, standing next to my bed. Certainly, the speakers of my phone shouldn't be able to make any kind of noise sound that well.

... This must be a dream. This _has_ to be a dream. Nepgear can't possibly be standing there, in my room, _in the real world_. If this wasn't a dream, though, it probably could be explained as a vivid dream; yes, that must be it. If I close my eyes again and concentrate, I'll just end waking up for real this time around.

"... Lua? You're feeling okay, right? Are you sick...?" She continues to speak in a worried tone. However, I had already closed my eyes and began to focus on the thought that I had to wake up, no matter how enticing this dream was.

After a brief period of pure darkness, in which I couldn't hear or feel anything, I opened my eyes again. Then, when I turned around—

... I felt an intense source of pain coming from my forehead, making me reel back, close my eyes and clutch the area with both of my hands. I don't know what just happened, but... once the pain started to subside, I realized something: I felt pain; I felt pain, and yet the dream hasn't stopped. This wasn't a dream. This is real.

Opening my eyes again, I noticed someone—a girl—with long purple hair that was wearing white clothes with some purple accents. She was crouching on the floor, holding her forehead with tears coming out of her closed eyes.

"Ow…! … T-That really hurts…" I blearily hear her mumble. I think we both hit each other when I turned around…

"U-Uhh..." Not really knowing what to say, for my mind was literally overworking with thoughts about what was really going on right now. Not only there was a girl on my bedroom, but this girl sounded like Nepgear, looked like Nepgear and even knew my in-game name...

After hearing my voice, the girl opened one of her eyes and somehow managed to push through her pain to smile back at me, albeit in a rather awkward way. "G-Good morning, Lua!"

Just watching that smile of hers, as well as her deep purple eyes, brushed aside all of my doubts regarding this person's identity. She doesn't look like Nepgear nor does she sound like her; she _is_ Nepgear!

I don't know how, but Nepgear somehow made it to the real world and is now crouching next on the floor, next to my bed!

"... Wait, N-Nepgear is in my bedroom?!"

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**Thank you for reading until the end. This is only the beginning of what I'm hoping will become an entertaining story for everyone that reads it. Thus, expect more chapters to come out soon.**

**Also, I'd really love if you left your opinion about this story on a review. It's not necessary at all, but it's highly appreciated nevertheless!**


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